


Home is When I'm With You

by biggrstaffbunch



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Poetry, Prose Poem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-02
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-11 06:14:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/475402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggrstaffbunch/pseuds/biggrstaffbunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He's a ginger," Louis says proudly, carding his hand through orange fur. "Let's name him Ed." The years have passed, and things are more settled now. So Harry and Louis get a cat. [more stuff happens, I swear, it's all a metaphor anyway!]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. lay the foundations

****part one: lay the foundations**   
**

 

|

  
"Let's get a cat," you say suddenly,   
one morning as the clouds unload over London   
drenching the streets in a storm.   
The dark sky makes you think of strangers    
caught in the downpour, lonely   
as they weave through crowds of brightly-colored umbrellas    
avoiding the eyes of    
all the people huddled underneath   
in pairs.   
  
You were one of those strangers once   
walking around with damp hair and a vague chill,   
unsettled without knowing why   
singing with a low-cello yearning that   
made no sense amidst the screaming girls   
and the pretty girlfriend and the   
best friend that made your lungs   
hurt every time you   
looked at him   
too long.   
  
(Eventually, you learned how to   
put a name to that ache,   
though your breath   
hasn't really come easy   
since.)   
  
The screaming crowds are long gone   
the pretty girlfriend as well   
but the best friend who made pieces of you   
fracture and fall away even as you   
got stronger and more confident   
in the public eye   
is still around.   
Caught on your arm like a burr   
stubborn, smiling even   
when you tried your hardest to pluck him off   
and throw him somewhere that   
the muck of this world   
and the shite they tweeted   
wouldn't get him, too.   
  
And, really:   
you've weathered storms worse than the   
one outside, the pair of you,   
a tug of war of intention and desire   
of wants and can't-haves   
of no and yes and we won't have forever.   
Eventually, you got tired of raging against   
the brick wall of everyone's expectations and   
finally,  _finally_   
the rope is slack in your hands.   
  
Words have always unraveled   
smoothly from the spool of your machinations   
and clever tongue, but you have no words   
for his breath against your temple as you   
stand in the wavering grey light   
of this sullen Sunday morning.   
  
So you turn to Harry now, hooking your fingers    
around the nape of his neck   
where the hair grows wild and curly,   
and pressing your forehead into    
the hot crook of his throat,   
you say:   
  
"Because we're lucky, yeah?"    
  
His voice goes soft, lit from within like   
the sun's melting through him slow and steady   
when he answers, "Yeah. We're lucky."   
  
And you are. Lucky, that is.   
Young men who stand together   
framed by a window that is   
dotted with rain   
in a house that you've bought and paid   
for, together. For a life that you're    
living, together.   
Casting shadows that look   
like two halves of a lopsided   
heart, together.    
  
The evolution of your relationship with Harry   
began years ago, a winding path that is marked    
from start to finish by that pang in your ribs    
when you catch his eyes or share a laugh.   
And the thing is, this window and this house and this cat    
will mean more than just one bed instead of two.   
It will mean something that lasts   
longer than a promotional tour and a bachelor flat;   
it will mean you get to  _keep_  each other   
for once.   
  
So when he warns you that   
"A cat will be like an anchor for us. No more   
setting sail into the horizon,   
looking for trouble,"   
you grin big even as he adds,    
  
"Won't you miss the adventure?"   
  
Oh, yes.    
You will miss the adventure, but    
you've had enough of traveling like a vagabond    
with a guitar strapped at your back;   
transience holds no allure   
when you finally   
have something worth   
permanence.   
  
Besides, mischeviousness is a second skin now.   
Even though you've settled with Harry,    
like the sun sinks into the sea,   
you're not a proper grown-up yet   
still a lad who eats ice-cream for supper    
and who wears slip-on shoes because   
he really can't be bothered   
with laces.   
  
There is still time left,    
you decide, tracing the outline of Harry's mouth   
with one wondering thumb,   
for adventure.   
  
  
|   
  
  
Louis brings home a kitten   
instead of a cat.   
Of course, left to his own devices,    
he will always go for the ones    
that need the most protection   
  
(They called Liam the Daddy of One Direction, but   
it was Louis who rocked you through your first   
panic attack, arm slung around your neck backstage, mouth   
brushing your ear, muttering stories and jokes and the   
occasional endearment: "My Hazza,"   
he said, and from that point on   
you sort of were.)   
  
so, you are not surprised   
at the bundle that peeks through   
the gaps of Louis' fingertips   
with too-large eyes and a short stubby tail   
and the most pathetic meow you've   
ever heard.   
  
"He's a ginger," Louis says proudly,   
carding his hand through   
orange fur. "Let's name him Ed."   
  
You laugh like a maniac and suggest   
"Carrot," just to see the look on Louis' face,   
before shaking your head and   
announcing that the kitten's name is    
Rocket, of course.   
Because even to this day,    
you remember those old, old lyrics:    
_shot me out of the sky_   
and that feeling is so perfectly captured   
so boiled down to its very essence   
that you think something ought to    
hallmark it, somehow.   
  
"Hello, Rocket," Louis declares   
and the kitten swipes at his stubbly chin,   
limbs gangly and awkward under its thick fur.   
It spills from Louis' grip, leaping to the floor,   
looking vaguely hunted as it lands.    
You scoop up the kitten with one hand, the other   
hand stroking its trembling spine, and briefly,   
you feel a burn of sympathy for this   
small, skittish creature.   
  
There was a time when you were just as scared   
to put yourself into the care of strangers.   
Your vision of the future was a precious thing   
and you were too young then to know   
how it would all turn out; how strangers would   
turn into people who would come to love you   
more than you could ever dream.   
  
But your cat will be okay   
because you and Louis are long practiced   
in keeping fragile things safe--   
cupped in your palms like   
a flame, faithfully lit and flickering   
in the cage of your interlocked fingers--   
shielded from the wind   
or the flash    
of a camera bulb.   
  
Your cat will be okay,   
because you and Louis   
were okay, too   
in the end.   
  
"Hello, Rocket," you echo,    
holding him aloft, nose-to-twitching-nose   
and when he mewls back rather confidently   
you can't stop the smile that overtakes your face.   
Happiness brims inside of you like water sloshing against   
the rim of a very tall glass, but it's always been like that,   
where you're so full of emotion that sometimes    
it tips out in grins that can't be leashed,    
or the kind of laughter that comes   
deep from your belly.   
  
A warm kiss on the nape of your neck,   
the lazy drape of arms around your waist,   
and the weight of Rocket's body in the stack of your palms.   
There is nothing more electrifying than the contentment   
you currently feel.   
  
For now, to channel the effusiveness that is   
buzzing down your limbs,   
you kiss the tufty head of your new little friend   
and say:    
  
"Welcome to the family, mate."   
  
|


	2. weather the storm

As it turns out, you're crap with Rocket.  
Not that you're terribly bad with pets in general--  
always were a bit chummy at photoshoots with dogs  
and cats and that one elephant who, sadly,  
took a special liking to Zayn.  
But this kitten is so small  
and so absolutely enamored of you  
already. "He's obsessed," Harry says  
voice delighted, lips curved into  
a smirk. And it's funny, but 

devotion makes your skin itch.  
You pick your kitten up and put it down again  
because you find yourself  
trying to breathe slow and steady,  
trying to remember:  
It's okay to love and to be loved  
deeply, sometimes darkly  
sometimes like you'll suffocate  
under the force of it.

(Isn't that what you feel every morning  
when you wake up and see Harry's shoulders  
framed in sunlight and shadow, an infinity symbol  
inked across his nape in a promise?  
Like your breath is trapped in your throat, full of  
the love brimming there, the almost  
desperate claw of contentment that  
sits, so unfamiliar, in your chest?)

The thing is, you're a caretaker to your core  
\--big brother, loving son, bandmate, best friend--  
but you're unused to the utter terror of  
being solely responsible for someone else's  
tender heart. Unused to intimacy  
without the manic need to outpace the axe of  
"what if" and "tomorrow it could end" and "this is just temporary"  
swinging lazily over your head. 

You're older now, yeah. The bricks are all laid bare,  
the groundwork of your little family  
nearly complete, but:

Sometimes, you forget how much time you still have. Sometimes  
you still have the urge to run.

As much as you want to cradle this kitten in your arms and  
feed it scraps of food and flick a laser pointer  
across your hardwood floor,  
there are moments when you close your eyes  
and you find yourself fumbling. Pushing him away,  
ignoring his mewling, shuttering yourself  
from the big eyes and unending trust  
and the distant possibility of  
starting something that will  
one day inevitably end.

Stupid, but: you remember how, in those first days  
of being with Harry, you used to  
measure your feelings in teaspoons.  
You meted out kisses and words and  
the most loaded glances  
with an almost miserly sort of love.  
Like if you parceled out every emotion  
with careful attention  
you had any chance in hell of saving yourself  
from losing everything.

But Harry has never been content with halfway  
and to be frank, neither have you.  
You used to sit in darkened rooms,  
secret places where  
Harry’s mouth would slant warm and wet  
over your own, thighs bracketing your waist &  
something foreign but hot  
swooping through your belly  
at his touch.

And eventually, when the lights came on, flooding the corners  
with a glaring honesty that was every bit as exhilarating  
as it was horrifying, you realized that  
Harry’s hand was still laced through yours and  
no amount of searching for new rooms  
for new hideaways  
would erase that truth from where it was  
seared in your brain, your gut,  
your blood. 

“You can run,” he’d said once, angry and confused and  
so fucking in _love_. “But I’m going to come after you.”

You could tell him now, of the fear  
that comes and goes, that brings you to your knees  
and even years later, you know that  
if you asked him to run with you,  
he would.

But there’s a courage left  
to unearth with age  
A rawness of your very soul,  
slowly uncovered  
with Harry’s help and with the roof  
that spreads above you both.  
Roots that are growing from the soles  
of your feet and the  
braver parts of your heart.

So, you pet Rocket's neck, thumb swiping the  
reedy little pulse, and as he butts his head into your palm,  
you duck your face  
into Harry's neck and count the number of heartbeats till you can breathe again. 

|

You fold yourself into the bath one day  
angry and tense at the world.  
Another gig booked  
another hope raised, revived  
from the ashes of tabloid headlines and  
keening girls and  
industry insiders who all said,  
"Lance Bass waited, you know."

Back then, you were Harry Styles: teenage popstar,  
burdened with acne and silent anxieties  
and the kind of hubris that exists only in youth,  
unaware that you were screaming out secrets  
shouting to the world even  
when you weren't saying  
a goddamned word.

(Your body language, all those glances exchanged,  
the certainty of each press of his arm against  
your own...  
if you're honest, you wouldn't have stopped  
even if you could have. Those moments are  
sacred like no religion  
ever has been to you  
before.)

But it's the brightest of stars that burn themselves out  
the fastest. And the star that shone over your band of brothers  
was bright, indeed.  
You didn't want a violent end, a supernova made from the sheer force of  
your feelings for Louis and everyone else's  
reaction to Louis' feelings for you. Once the spiderweb cracks  
began to blossom at the edges of every smile  
and press tour, you decided:  
If there was to be an implosion, a sputtering of gaseous energy and  
the winking out of something once so great  
it was damned well going to be on your own terms.

That is what you told Louis, and then what you and Louis told your bandmates,  
and then what you and Louis and your bandmates told your team  
and then what the tabloids told your fans, and then the rest of the world  
five years ago.

Now, you are a man finally free of  
unpredictable spots dotting your teenage skin,  
and frenetic fingers that twisted  
in the cotton material of Louis' t-shirt  
when you thought no one could see.  
Now, you live in a time where  
people are supposed to be  
gentler and kinder, more tolerant 

\--and oh how you hate the word because of what  
it implies: a permission given by those who have no right  
to allow or disallow in the first place--

but the truth is, this world is still mean  
can still promise you things &  
snatch them away  
under the guise of, "Looking  
for another sound,  
another look;  
just...someone else. Sorry."

Louis tells you that business will pick up again  
but you're not certain of that,  
because you've always been something of a gamble,  
and if Louis has faith,  
it's only because he's got a bit of the devil in him  
has always loved to take chances,  
especially when it comes to you.

Rocket darts in through the half-shut door  
skittering on clumsy paws  
maowing his euphoria in a distant echo  
of the familiar laughter that rings from downstairs  
in the kitchen where  
Louis is throwing your best china around  
with abandon.

Even as your mind despairs,  
your lips tug at the corner, watching this copper-coloured talisman  
that wards off ghosts from the past  
skittering through the corridors of your heart and house  
a reminder of the bricks you are laying now,  
adding to the floors that were forged  
to be unshakeable.

You slip under the water, letting your mind drift from  
thoughts of rejection and sacrifice,  
thinking instead about how once upon a time, kissing the man you love felt like  
drowning: the suffocating fear, the surreal calm, the tsunami rise  
of longing in your gut.  
And now that you're older, now that you know  
what it is to truly drown, to be dragged under by forced beyond your control,  
you think about how kissing him actually feels like  
swimming. Light, buoyant, cutting cleanly away from a shoreline  
that once closed you in from every point.  
The sense of stretching hand over hand  
towards the sun,  
of coming  
home.

The sink drips  
and Rocket purrs  
and downstairs, Louis  
begins to sing a song  
as he merrily burns dinner  
for you both.

|


	3. making a mark

|

 

Sometimes you read Neruda to Harry  
for no other reason than the blush it sends in  
pink waves down the expanse of his  
broad chest, and the long column  
of his neck.

Other times, you read Neruda to Harry  
for the way that poems and poets are ghostwriters  
of the life you still haven't quite learned how to accept,  
their phantom pens writing the words you still  
haven't quite learned how to say. Because  
Neruda, his poems are sensual enough that  
you still stutter over entire stanzas, but the real power  
is in the honesty that strips the listener bare  
nestled within each line you speak,  
in the shake of your voice as you read the words that,  
peel the flesh from the bone  
of this grand love he is painting  
this grand love that you are living.

You deconstruct Harry at breakfast,  
as the sky outside brightens and Rocket naps sleepily  
at your feet, and you open your book to begin:

"To bread I do not ask to teach me  
but only not to lack during every day of life."  
Harry grins like he knows, eyes wide and luminous,  
a piece of toast raised to his mouth  
in a silent promise.

"I don’t know anything about light--" you press on,  
tracing the planes of his face with a gaze full of wonder,  
the kind you still can't seem to shake because  
it lives in the very bones and home of you.  
"--from where it comes nor where it goes...  
I only want the light to light up."  
and Harry pauses, forkful of egg raised  
to his lips, a slow dawn moving through his  
smile, and then of course,  
your own.

"I do not ask to the night _explanations_ ,"  
here, you flick a finger teasingly at his brooding brow,  
tug the collar of his standard black t-shirt,  
touch the edge of the ink on his chest  
and then on his arm, and his wrist and  
the two on his knuckles.  
Harry reaches out, hand catching yours,  
fingers folding over your own. 

"I wait for it," you say,  
twining your hands with his,  
voice low and earnest,  
"And it envelops me."

Harry eats his toast, and his eggs,  
and you let Rocket bat at your ankles with  
tiny little claws and tiny little teeth  
and when the domesticity of the moment suspends,  
plates shoved aside and the weight of his gaze making you  
look up from the heavy rotation of your thoughts,  
you tell him, seriously:

"And so you,  
bread, and light,  
and shadow,  
are."

You hope Harry knows that  
this collection of metaphors  
is inadequate for the simple truth of  
who he is and what he means to you.  
You hope he knows that the reason your tongue  
trips over the studied elegance of each  
sentence and turn of phrase is because, really  
if you were to tell him the depth of your  
every emotion in your own words, they would come  
easy but clumsy  
frenzied, and punctuated  
by invectives.

(Anyway. You've always had a flair for  
drama, and he for romance,  
so this dog-eared book with its faded inscriptions  
and its resonant truths  
suits you both, in the end.)

"Do you want me to read you  
a bit of like, Sylvia Plath?" Harry asks  
one day as you stroll through the park  
pinkies linked and the phrase  
 _because love battles_ still thick  
on your tongue. He looks wholly  
ridiculous, with Rocket in a kitten carrier  
strapped to his chest, and a goofy grin  
lilting across his face. You squint  
and try to imagine him with his head in an oven. 

"Nah," you decide. Crowding close, you  
bend over and drop a kiss on the  
top of Rocket's head, peering up at  
Harry through your lashes. "Poetry, young  
Harold, is for those moments when  
your own actions aren't enough."  
And you grin, slow and curling, as your hand catches  
his wrist, and you back into the  
darkened crosshatch of trees and their canopies of  
leaves, earthy smell and soft ground, and  
echoing, sacred silence.

You're young, and in love, and whatever  
milestone might mark your path  
going forward, there are  
some truths that even words  
could never touch.

 

|

 

Since the first time you pressed a needle  
to Louis' skin, awash in the low-lit warmth of a hotel room  
with Zayn's watchful eye somehow a safety net  
and a cage all at once, you have been addicted to  
marking Louis with lines that are  
permanent, unending.

Armed with a tattoo gun in hand and  
fingers pressed into the white of Louis' flesh,  
you carve an inside joke into  
the inside of his elbow and a soft little memory  
into the curve of his waist.  
And if people think your own tattoos are stupid,  
you are positive that they look at Louis' with equal disdain.  
But neither of you are occupied with aesthetic value;  
placement and font are secondary concerns  
when compared to the _meaning_ contained in  
every shape and letter you draw into  
the vulnerable planes of his ribs and nape and  
on one occasion, the tender surface of  
his inner thigh.

There's the fact, too, that even  
the stupidest phrase--  
a "Hi!" scrawled over translucent skin  
stretched tight over veins--  
is heavy with the weight of the moment it evokes:  
the scratch of a Sharpie and the sharp glint  
of an impish smile, and the sudden,  
stomach-dropping realization that there is  
no easy erasure of this person from your life.  
Not now, probably not ever.

You have always been sentimental, is the thing.  
Prone to worrying about the transience of time and  
wishing there were some way to preserve the immediacy  
of the present, casting it in a tomb of amber  
to be preserved forever.  
Sometimes, dragging a touch across Louis' collarbone  
you ghost an X across the "H" that you dared Louis to get  
and that Louis dared you to give, so very long ago  
and you think of how this small letter,  
innocuously enough placed,  
is a firefly in stone--  
the most permanent reminder of the moment  
two days after you gave him that tattoo  
when you kissed Louis for the first time in the cold dark  
of a backstage corridor, body flush against his and  
your thumb pressed desperately  
into his still-healing skin. 

And if that is how your journey began,  
with your initial on the rising jut of his bone  
and all the implications buried within those  
three boldly drawn lines  
then this is how the journey continues:  
with a myriad of marks that litter his torso and limbs  
all the untouched swathes of skin acting as  
undiscovered and uncharted waters that you have  
yet to conquer, to claim.

"This is one thing that you can't erase,"  
you whisper to him, voice low over the drone  
of the gun, that old need for reassurance  
making your cheeks feel tight and hot.

"This is one thing that won't _disappear_ ,"  
Louis always answers, gaze fastened on yours,  
the affection in his face softening the blunt edge  
of your own insecurity.

And so it goes. You say what you can in  
the language of pain sparking  
against bone and the bone-jarring impact of  
your foot against the pedal:

You give Louis a five point star on the slope of his shoulder  
for the way he carries the burden and blessing of  
the family you and the boys created, once upon a time.  
To commemorate the first night you and he spend in  
the cavernous bedroom that you can finally call your own,  
consummating the ache that never seems to cease between you,  
you wordlessly spread him out so he is lying on his stomach  
and tracing a hand across his back, you watch his fists  
clench in the blankets as you draw into his spine  
the three chord harmony that plays in your head  
everytime he looks at you.  
And on another, more random day when  
the only thing worth marking is the contentment of  
tangling your fingers with his and  
listening to the Script through shared headphones  
you use red ink to scrawl a thin line around and over  
the slim circle of Louis' wrist  
because you still firmly believe that  
there are no such things  
as coincidences.

Now, sitting in the kitchen of a home that could  
serve as a memory capsule so your bodies don't have to  
you watch the broad width of Louis' shoulders as he makes tea  
and Rocket winds through his ankles, purring lazily.  
Closing your eyes, you think of the next tattoo  
you will ink into the fourth knuckle of his left hand.

("It means limitless," you tell him later  
the infinity loop standing out in stark contrast  
against the pale crease of his joint,  
mirrored on your own skin, tucked under your curls  
a twin symbol of fidelity and fate.)

Ultimately, the truth is this.  
Louis leaves you poetry, and you leave Louis  
the only kind of art you've ever been able to master...  
images and phrases that capture, in some small way, the  
litany of things that beat in the muscle of your heart.

**Author's Note:**

> No way I could properly thank teaatsix or flyingkai enough for all their hand-holding in this. There's three parts to this thing, based off a prompt from the fluffmeme, and it's such a labor of love. Please read!


End file.
